Core Team

The cast of characters that conceived this project, did most of the grunt work to bring it into being, and now keep the Beautiful Universe expanding.

A​drian Carpenter

Senior Developer & Secret Weapon

Not so comfortable talking about himself in 3° person, Adrian would prefer to be closing a shell session having solved another data structure problem. Aspires to a life without machines, politicians or lawyers; sees their value for the time being.

A long-time veteran of creative campaigns for social change, Andrew led the decade-long satirical media campaign “Billionaires for Bush” and co-founded the Other 98%. He's the author of a couple books: Daily Afflictions, Life’s Little Deconstruction Book, and the forthcoming I Want a Better Catastrophe: Hope, Hopelessness and Climate Reality. Unable to come up with with his own lifelong ambition, he’s been cribbing from Milan Kundera: “to unite the utmost seriousness of question with the utmost lightness of form.” You can find him at andrewboyd.com.

Chelsea Byers

Training Coordinator, Oracle of Outreach

Chelsea graduated from Northern Arizona University in 2012 and spent the next two years training, organizing, and empowering student leaders for the betterment of Arizona’s public education system before joining the rebel-rousers at Beautiful Trouble where she now coordinates trainings and manages communications. Chelsea lends a hand to other organizations including CODEPINK and Woman's Way Red Lodge and manages campaigns around demilitarization and just economic transition. Chelsea advocates for the self-determination of all people and is passionate about intersectionality politics, capacity building, and creative engagement.

Dave Oswald Mitchell is the Editorial Director of the Beautiful Trouble project, including serving as managing editor of both Beautiful Solutions and Beautiful Rising. He edited the Canadian activist publication Briarpatch Magazine from 2005 to 2010, and his writing has been published by a smattering of small, radical magazines and journals with space to fill. His interests include books, beer, brevity, alliteration, free association, lists of things, and going elsewhere.

Eli Feghali

Co-Editor, Beautiful Solutions

Eli Feghali is Co-Editor of Beautiful Solutions and Communications Director for the New Economy Coalition (NEC). He is a Lebanese-American who spent two months in 2011 occupying a park in Boston to prove another world was possible. Through NEC and Beautiful Solutions, Eli works to tell the story of what that other world could look like -- and how we can get there. Despite his love for pizza, he is vegan.

Frank Kearl

Proto-Counsel

Frank is a native Texan, born and raised in San Antonio, but his parents were originally from elsewhere so he's drawl-less. He has a degree in Philosophy from USC and would impatiently contemplate the nature of time while sitting in LA traffic. He lived in Austin for a few years and played in a band called Conquistador Incorporated. They were tragically underappreciated. Then he moved to New York for almost three years and was excited every time he caught a glimpse of the Chrysler Building at night. He's now in law school in NYC but still feels older, wiser and in less of a hurry.

Jason Cummings

Monarch of Moola

Jason is a numerical wizard with over 10 years of management experience in the financial service business (although we try not to hold that against him). He holds degrees from Medgar Evers College and Columbia University, and has worked with various NYC-based businesses and non-profits, including Flatbush Action Day Care, Standard Architects, Community Impact, and The Abyssinian Fund. When not crunching numbers, he's eating his way through Brooklyn, offset by rigorous daily workouts.

Lowell Daniels

Apprentice Wizard of the Hive

Lowell is a painter, sculptor, and recent graduate in St. Louis. He spends his time working on creative ways to enchant groups of people, supporting local businesses with green practices, and pretending to be an eagle. He is active in St. Louis’ art scene, and uses his mediums to promote change in subtle ways. Though Lowell likes to advocate for multiple causes, he is, at heart, an opportunist, and wants to see more action in the world. Especially if that action involves pretending to be an eagle.

Mara Ranville

Project Administrator, Web Editor, & Mistress of Consequences

Mara is an editor, scientist, environmentalist and water guru, and is probably in New York, Oaxaca, or Michigan. Or maybe somewhere else.

Nadine Bloch is currently Training Director for Beautiful Trouble. She is an innovative artist, nonviolent practitioner, political organizer, direct-action trainer, and puppetista. Her work explores the potent intersection of art and politics; where creative cultural resistance is not only effective political action, but also a powerful way to reclaim agency over our own lives, fight oppressive systems, and invest in our communities — all while having more fun than the other side! Her affiliations include work with Greenpeace, Labor Heritage Foundation, Nonviolence International, Ruckus Society, HealthGAP and Housing Works, and Bread & Puppet Theater. She is a contributor to Beautiful Trouble book and We Are Many, Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation (2012, AK Press). Check out her monthly column on WagingNonviolence, “The Arts of Protest.”

Philip Smith

Web Maker & Project Agitator

Phillip Smith is a veteran digital publishing consultant and online advocacy specialist. For more than a decade and a half he has provided expert advice and hands-on help to innovative and progressive publishers around the globe, for example High Country News, Global News, Grist.org, Mother Jones, New Internationalist, OR Books, Rabble, and the award-winning daily online news site, The Tyee.
Phillip frequently delivers workshops on a range of topics, including effective online communications, advocacy, and fundraising. He has planned, produced, and delivered workshops to leaders of the northwest environmental movement, student organizers at MIT, and campaigners in Canada's national capital that share his experiences supporting online campaigns for the Billionaires for Bush, Greenpeace's "Kleercut" campaign, and Ralph Nader's presidential campaign in 2008.
In addition to shepherding the Knight-Mozilla partnership into existence in 2010, Phillip co-founded the Toronto chapters of Hacks/Hackers and The Awesome Foundation.

Rae Abileah is a social change strategist, community organizer, activist, writer, and advocate for human rights, environmental justice, and community wellness. She was the co-director and national organizer of CODEPINK Women for Peace for eight years fighting the good fight against the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She’s an active member of Jewish Voice for Peace and cofounded the youth wing of the organization. Her creative work with the anti-war and environmental justice movements has led her to pop up in Congress speaking truth to politicians on the daily, run an activist house in DC, take the bullhorn at marches, compose innumerable song parodies and flashmobs, share some hearty sound bites with the media, lead delegations to the Middle East, learn a little html, create activist training camps and ruckus raising skill shares, and put her body on the line for justice. She’s a contributing author to Beautiful Trouble, Beyond Tribal Loyalties, 10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military, and Corporate Complicity in Israeli Occupation. She is based in San Francisco.